AOL Adds Location, Voice Chat To Development Platform

AOL announced Monday that it has extended its Open AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) initiative to add support for AIM bots, location-based services and PC-to-PC calling.

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AOL announced Monday that it has extended its Open AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) initiative to add support for AIM bots, location-based services and PC-to-PC calling.

The enhancements mean that developers will be able to leverage those capabilities, providing the new services to the installed base of over 43 million AIM users, according to AOL.

The Open AIM initiative launched in March of this year to enable developers, companies, and communities to build plug-ins, communication clients and more for use on the AIM service.

"The Open AIM initiative is an initiative for developers to create new products on the AIM network," said Justin Uberti, chief architect for AIM, in an interview. "We're inviting developers to build whatever they think is a good application."

The company has established Open AOL partnerships with Doppelganger, which designs "virtual nightclubs" for teens. AOL also teamed up with Bandalong Entertainment, an interactive media company, to launch an AIM-enabled version of the company's imstar service, an avatar-based 3D chat program.

"imstar is a downloadable application in which users can create an avatar [or customizable digital character], which becomes a digital representation of themselves when messaging with friends," said Pam Quandt, vice president of marketing for Bandalong Entertainment. "The AOL relationship allows users to use AIM to communicate to their friends, using their avatar."

Monday's upgrade to AOL's Open initiative includes support for AIM bots. AIM bots are dedicated screen names that can be used for marketing and other purposes, and offer support for audio files, file transfers and picture sharing. AIM bots respond automatically to IMs they receive and can maintained automated conversations with up to 10,000 users per day, Uberti said.

"AIM bots are sort of like Web sites; they're interactive agents that you can send messages to, but instead of being in your browser they're in your IM window," Uberti said. "One example is our Wall Street Journal bot, which gives you business news and stock tips. Since AIM also hooks up with SMS you can access this information from your cell phone as well."

To ensure that the bots or other AIM communications do not serve as a backdoor for viruses, AOL requires each developer of the Open initiative to obtain a "key" to insert into their application. The bots also can not initiate communication, and only respond.

"They need to register for a key from us, which goes into their application or bot," Uberti said. "If somebody is doing something we don't approve of, like viruses or telemarketing, we can shut off that key from the server side, which would shut that application off the network."

Future enhancements to the program will include support for bot-initiated communications, with members who put the bots on their buddy list. Bots will not be allowed to spam, however.

"We have controls in AIM where you can only receive calls and present them to the user in a certain fashion -- this isn't a mechanism where people could start sending telemarketing or other sorts of ads to you," Uberti said.

AOL has also incorporated location-based services into its Open AIM initiative. The new application program interfaces (APIs) will allow developers to build location services into clients, plug-ins and eventually web sites. Plug-ins are pieces of code that add features and/or functionality to the AIM client.

"We've added the ability for buddies to tell people where they are geographically, so on your buddy list you could see where your friends are, where they're living, or if they go out to their favorite restaurant or bar you could see they are down there," Uberti said. "We're proactive about privacy, so only people on your buddy list can see where you are."

These location-based services can work in one of two ways: with the API, where a user can plug in the actual GPS information; or with AIM's "best guess" service that uses network information to estimate location.

"This is new for both end-users and developers," Uberti said. "Not only are we releasing the API for developers to use, we're releasing a plug-in that uses this API for end users to try out."

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"Here, we're exposing another programmer interface where developers creating applications on the AIM network can now make audio calls to other users on the network in their own applications," Uberti said. "We're taking a service we already have on the AIM network and making it available for all developers."

Lastly, AOL has incorporated support for Mac OS X, Linux and Pocket PC platforms, as well as the Java programming language, for its Open AIM initiative.

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